There are rotten apples in every industry. Or perhaps I should say rotten eggs.
One especially rotten egg is Jack DeCoster, whose commercial egg agribusiness, which goes under the homey title "Wright County Egg," headquartered in Galt, Iowa, sends eggs all over the country under many different brands. Those eggs have now laid low thousands of Americans with salmonella poisoning, and may well infect thousands more.
DeCoster is recalling 380 million eggs sold since mid-May. Another commercial egg company, also headquartered in Iowa, and in which DeCoster is a major investor, is recalling hundreds millions more.
It's not clear how recall rotten eggs are recalled. They're not like Toyotas. They're already in our food supply.
But this is only the beginning of the story.
Thirteen years ago when I was Secretary of Labor, DeCoster agreed to pay a $2 million penalty (the most we could throw at him) for some of the most heinous workplace violations I'd seen. His workers had been forced to live in trailers infested with rats and handle manure and dead chickens with their bare hands. It was an agricultural sweatshop.
Several people in Maine told me the fine wouldn't stop DeCoster. He'd just consider it a cost of doing business. Evidently they were right. DeCoster's commercial egg business has a record that would make a repeat offender blush.
In 2003, DeCoster pleaded guilty to knowingly hiring undocumented immigrants (who don't complain about unsafe working conditions, below-minimum-wage pay, and unsanitary facilities). DeCoster paid a record $2.1 million penalty for that one.
In the 1990s he was charged by Iowa authorities for violating state environmental laws governing the runoff of manure into rivers. He continued to violate environmental laws so often that the Iowa Supreme Court approved an order barring him from building more hog structures.
In 2002 the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission fined DeCoster's operation $1.5 million for mistreating female workers. The charges included rape, sexual harassment, and other abuses.
Earlier this year, DeCoster paid another fine to settle state animal cruelty charges against his egg operations in Maine.
In other words, the current national salmonella outbreak is just the latest in a long series of DeCoster corporate crimes. He's fostered a culture that disregards any law standing in the way of profits. Along the way, DeCoster has abused the environment, animals, his employees, and his customers.
Corporations that play fast and loose with one set of laws are likely to cut corners on others. Look at Massey Energy Company, which owned the mine where 27 miners were killed several months ago. Massey also had a long record of law breaking, and had racked up an even longer list of alleged violations and settlements. Or consider BP, whose malfeasance even before the Gulf spill, included workplace safety violations, deaths, and other environmental disasters.
When I was Secretary of Labor, Bridgestone-Firestone's refused to install safety equipment resulted in the maiming or deaths of its workers in Oklahoma. A few years later, its faulty tires caused still more deaths.
Some CEOs are just bad citizens, and the corporations they head get the message that the public be damned.
Too often, though, one level or agency of government doesn't know about corporate malfeasance turned up by another level or agency of government. This is especially true when violations are settled out of court, as is now common. Government doesn't have nearly enough inspectors or lawyers to bring every rotten egg to trial.
A national database of corporate crimes and settlements would tip off federal, state, and local inspectors to rotten eggs like Jack DeCoster's agribusiness, Massey Energy, BP, Bridgestone Firestone, and other serial corporate offenders. Scarce inspection resources could be targeted at them rather than at the good eggs. Consumers could benefit as well.
And the rot wouldn't spill over to other companies now under competitive pressure to treat fines and penalties as the costs of doing business.
Before we can get rid of corporate rotten eggs we need to know about them.
This post originally appeared at RobertReich.org.
William Marler: "I am the Egg [Rule] ... " Would It Have Prevented the Salmonella Outbreak?
David Kirby: Lessons From the Egg Recall: Cheap Food Makes You Sick
Jonathan Bernstein: Egg Recall -- Don't Roll That Way
Elizabeth Hitchcock: Scrambled, Over Easy or Contaminated?
What would Chairman Mao do?
How many media outlets have given you the time to discuss this issue with the depth that you have stated here? None, and if there are forced to they will give you only enough time for sound-bites.
What a total disgrace...
They will be a bit more expensive, but you won't be supporting corporate thugs like DeCoster.
This is how capitalism works. The only thing that is important is profits. Boards of Directors don't care, CEOs don't care and investors most certainly don't care, mostly because they have not "invested" in the company but just look to make a buck on the stock.
The only way we can fix this is to first change capital gains taxes, making short term gambling expensive and long term investment profitable. We should break up large corporations, banks and financial institutions and make those functions separate (like under Glass-Steagal), and end argibusiness, bringing back small farms. This can be done by changing the farm subsidies, so that they only go to owner/operator farms under a certain gross income amount.
We need to grow the food closer to people rather than bring the food to the people. If we did not have to transport it all over the country, we would need less chemicals to grow and preserve them for the shelf. We could also leave the vegetables and fruits on the plants longer so that they mature naturally, rather than be gassed during shipment to finish ripening.
It is time that we stop placating business and start making business work for the people. We are the country and the government and not the other way around. We need to get rid of all politicians that put corporate interests ahead of the people.
Every government agency is corrupted. BP broke 700 OSHA laws in 2009, yet they were only slapped with fines. If they'd been shut down, there wouldn't have been a Gulf spill. If corporations are forced to comply with regulations instead of fines for continual infractions, they will either change the way they do business to comply with regulations, or be out of business, period.
It's time to get tough with the corporate polluters, in the food chain, and our environment.
A fine for your first infraction on a regulation, and your license to do business taken away next. The public needs protection from corporations who don't care about anything but profit.
Face it, government oversight doesn't work. If there were any problems known, the government could shut down production with just one word. However they are a sleep at the wheel.
I wish we could sue oversight like we could sue the producers. I would then sue the FDA out of business and replace them with something that works. Remember this, not one egg was sold that the government didn't assume was safe.
Why? Why? Why???
Are we so unshockable that it has become acceptable to buy food that is sourced to places that are rat infested, urine filled, animal torture chamber sweatshops??
Every time one of these reports come out. We are shocked! shocked! and then these guys continue to operate.
I just don't get it.
One of the costs of production IS safety inspections. In an economic model, every producer and supplier is a profit-maximizing actor, and consumers are cost-minimizers.
Cutting some corners, even safety standards and health regulations, lowers the cost for these firms, thus maximizing profits. Consumers then reward these firms that can profit and still hold down prices by purchasing their goods. Sure, we could let the market work itself out and have consumers choose not to buy this firm's products, but until that point, many will get sick or possibly die from a simple economic transaction.
Anyone who stands to profit, WILL cut corners. Even the firms that comply with every regulatory code in the book, does so with profit-maximization in mind: the costs of violating regulations or settling wrongful death or negligence claims are far higher than costs of compliance. Unfortunately, some firms will still gamble that their violations won't be discovered or won't have consequences.
In economic terms, this tendency is called a "market failure;" hence why government agencies intervene. We are not a free-enterprise, purely capitalist nation, we correct market failures, and Wright County Egg is why.
This country should get past the "good / evil" concept of business and just assume that business is obligated to maximize it's profits for share holders. It is the "RESPONSIBILITY" of government to set minimum standards and to enforce them. The polyanna idea that business can regulate itself is so naieve that I can't believe America bought into it again. We are a country of masochists.
And more and more of our food stuffs are coming from around the world. A world where food safety is not as stringent as in this country, as bad as it is. Chemicals banned in this country are not bound by the same laws we have here. Consequently, DDT and other cancer causing chemicals are still used in the foods we import.
Each year it's another one or more episodes of food poisoning in this country. It is imperative we increase food safety inspections on our food supply. Mass poisoning of thousands or possibly millions of Americans is simply unacceptable. There are online orgs that are involved in just this cause. Simply search for them and join the fight to make food safe.